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Linda Wirth. Breaking through the glass ceiling. Women in management. ILO: Geneva

 Why close the gender gap?
"Because not only is it the right thing to do, it’s also good for business."
Royal Bank of Canada

Contents

Introduction

Women’s increasing participation in the labour force
Improving women’s qualifications and opportunities
A key element in breaking through the glass ceiling
National policies for promoting women in management

 

Introduction

There is no doubt that significant progress has been achieved in furthering the cause of gender equality in the labour market over recent decades. Women have been moving steadily into occupations, professions and managerial jobs previously reserved for men. Their access to education and training continues to improve, providing many with the necessary qualifications to aspire to jobs in senior management. Governments, businesses, trade unions and women’s organizations have devoted much thought and energy to overcoming the attitudinal and institutional discrimination that bars women from certain jobs and hinders their career development, while the commitment to fight gender discrimination is renewed periodically at international conferences. Yet, many of the results fall short of expectations. Real obstacles remain, and these are often rooted in the way work itself is organized or in the challenges that face women who try to reconcile work and  family commitments. Women are still concentrated in the most precarious forms of work throughout the world and breaking through the "glass ceiling " still appears elusive for all but a select few. Women hold a mere 1 to 3 per cent of top executive jobs in the largest corporations around the world. Some progress has been made in the United States recently with women in 1999 obtaining 5.1 per cent of executive management positions in the 500 largest companies compared to 2.4 per cent in 1996. For women who also experience race discrimination, the barrier to top jobs seems to be made of unbreakable plexiglas.

The hurdles facing women aspiring to management jobs can be so formidable that they sometimes abandon efforts to make it to the top of large firms. They often take their energy and know-how to smaller and more flexible companies or set up their own businesses. By 1996 in Sweden, approximately 20 per cent of start-up companies were being run by women and by 1999 in the United States, 38 per cent of all firms were run by women.
In Australia, women make up 35 per cent of the country’s 1.3 million small business operators, and the growth rate of female small business operators from 1995 to 1997 was three times that for men.(2)

While women have captured an ever-increasing share of the labour market, improvements in the quality of women’s jobs have not kept pace. This is reflected in the smaller representation of women in management positions, particularly in the private sector, and their virtual absence from the most senior jobs. Wage differences in male and female managerial jobs stem from the reality that even when women hold management jobs, they are often in less strategic lower-paying areas of a company’s operations. They are also linked to the fact that women managers tend to be younger on average, as most senior jobs tend to be dominated by older men. Despite the persistent inequalities at managerial level, the continuous entry of women into higher-level jobs has been noted, although they remain under-represented in senior management. With few exceptions, the main challenge appears to be the sheer slow-ness in the progress of women into senior leadership positions in organizations, which suggests that discrimination is greatest where the most power is exercised. The importance of gender equality for economic growth and the welfare of families is, however, being increasingly recognized. The effective management of organizations and firms today depends on ensuring a balanced mix of so-called "masculine" and "feminine" attributes, and an increasing number of organizations are adopting measures to attract and retain women so as to benefit from their qualifications and talent in a competitive environment. And the growth in entrepreneurship and increasing numbers of women running their own businesses, both large and small, herald a different future for societies. The economic power gained by women will play a key role in the struggle to sweep aside gender inequalities in all walks of life. 

An ILO study, to be published shortly, provides an overview of the factors affecting women’s participation in management and decision-making. Using the most recent available data desagregated by sex, it examines the progress of women into management jobs and the obstacles they face to break through the glass ceiling to reach top positions. Topics covered include:

• current gender inequalities confronting women in the labour market and in political and social life, with a focus on women’s participation in the workforce, occupational segregation, pay differentials and gender time division;

• progress made by women in professional and managerial jobs, with recent statistics on women at the top in the public service, in finance and banking, and in politics;

• male and female participation in education and training, and strategies to help women qualify for careers in management;

• obstacles in the workplace that hinder women’s career development, how and why men’s and women’s career paths differ, and strategies to overcome barriers to women at higher organizational levels;

• policies, programmes and initiatives taken at the national level to promote women in management;

• international action, in particular on the part of the ILO, that has been taken to promote equal employment opportunities.

Gender inequalities in the labour market and in society

" Glass ceiling " is a term coined in the 1970s in the United States to describe the invisible artificial barriers, created by attitudinal and organizational prejudices, which block women from senior executive positions. Whether this glass ceiling occurs in the workplace or in politics it is essentially a reflection of social and economic gender inequality. With the achievement of educational parity and changes in social attitudes towards men’s and women’s roles, it had been somehow assumed that women would quickly move up the career ladder. This has proved hard to achieve and no more so than at the top, where the prevalence of male executives tends to perpetuate the glass ceiling and where women often find themselves without the right mix of corporate experience required for senior executive positions.

A major source of discrimination stems from strongly held attitudes towards women’s and men’s social roles and behaviour. If one compares the effective roles played by women and men rather than looking at women as an isolated group, it becomes apparent that each has different access to resources, work opportunities and status. The consequences of gender inequalities include women being "crowded" into a narrow range of occupations where there is less responsibility and/or lower pay, or having to work part time, where there are fewer opportunities for advancement. While this situation can be explained to some extent by men’s and women’s perceptions of their respective social roles, these roles have in fact been undergoing substantial changes in recent decades.
Labour force participation patterns of men and women, and social attitudes, have been gradually evolving to reflect these.

Since the advent of the women’s movement, changes in social acceptance of gender equality have been primarily due to changing perceptions among women and men themselves. The promulgation and enforcement of equal opportunity laws have not only lessened institutional discrimination; they have also had a considerable impact on the awareness of populations. In recent years, women’s working lives have become characterized by more continuous labour force participation. Women have entered many of the professions previously reserved for men, and their earnings have become an essential part of household income.

These changes have led to shifts in societal views about the role of women in the economy.
A survey in the United States revealed a growth in awareness between 1978 and 1995 of the existence of discrimination against working women in that country. A large percentage of those surveyed thought women have to perform better than men to get ahead. On the other hand, the proportion of those who believed women received their positions because they were women decreased from 46 per cent in 1978 to 25 per cent in 1995. A survey in Japan in the early 1990s showed increasing disagreement by both men and women with the traditional belief that men should hold jobs and women should stay at home and do housework. (3)

In 1987, 50 per cent of men and 38 per cent of women thought that women should stay at home. By 1990, these figures were 36 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

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